


243. light dusting

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [342]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena and Sarah make pancakes.





	243. light dusting

There’s flour all over the counters and it’s catching the light, drifting down like small snow over the kitchen. “Shit,” Sarah says, frowning at the recipe, a smear of something-or-other on her forehead, “I think we only needed two eggs.”

“I like eggs,” Helena points out. She is picking up small bits of shell from the counter and collecting them in a pile in her hand; they rest there, and they don’t look like bones. The light pours like syrup. Her stomach growls.

“Yeah, but not if they mess up the pancakes, meathead,” Sarah says. She keeps frowning. Shrugs. “Screw it,” she says, “odds were against us the whole time anyways.”

“If this fails,” Helena says, “we should go to the iHop.”

“If this fails,” Sarah mutters, “we should never show our bloody faces here again.” She keeps mixing the batter experimentally. It doesn’t _look_ like pancakes, but what does Helena know about cooking? Very little. She knows more about eating, which she will do, no matter if the pancakes are “good.” They will be good. Sarah helped to make them.

“What am I supposed to do,” Helena says.

“Uh,” Sarah says, and checks the recipe. “‘Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat,’ apparently.”

“What is griddle.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah says weakly. “A pan? Maybe?”

Helena looks at the pan. None of them have labels. “Um,” she says, and picks one at random. There are many bottles of oil so she picks one of those at random too. She squirts some of the oil into the pan – lightly, which means in the light. The gold of the oil oozes. When they are done with the pancakes Helena is going to drown them in syrup, so that they float and are golden-amber-brown. Sarah won’t put enough syrup on hers, because she never does, so Helena will help her. It will be good.

She puts the griddle on the stove, turns up the heat to somewhere in the middle. Done. Next to her Sarah has finished stirring the batter, and is _still_ frowning at it.

“Frowning will not make the pancakes sorry, Sarah,” Helena says. “They will still be the same things that they were before.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sarah says, and her face only slightly loosens. “Shouldn’t this be – easy shit? The recipe has two bloody steps, I just…” she stops.

“We are learning,” Helena says. “The next pancakes will be better, I think.”

Sarah tilts her a smile. “You’ve got some faith if you think there’s gonna be a next time,” she says.

“There will be next time,” Helena says promptly, to make Sarah’s smile get just a little bigger. Helena pokes her own forehead. “You have,” she says, and Sarah breathes _shite_ and licks her thumb to wipe it off her face.

“Don’t even know what this is,” she mutters.

“Pancake,” Helena offers.

“I can only hope,” Sarah says, and takes the bowl. “Alright, I’m gonna—” she says, and dumps a scoop of batter onto the griddle. It hisses and spits at Sarah, like an animal. Helena leans over Sarah’s shoulder and studies it.

“Too small,” she says. “Does not look like pancake. Make it bigger.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says, and holds back the bowl. “I’ve seen S do this, it’s supposed to be that size. You ever seen anyone make pancakes, meathead?”

She has a point. “No,” Helena says, and steps back. “Do not come crying when pancake is too small and you have baby pancake to eat.”

“Yeah, well, rather come cryin’ over that than some enormous monster pancake,” Sarah says.

“Sarah!”

“What.”

“Can we make monster pancake next. Big monster pancake. Can we please.”

Sarah opens her mouth to say _no_ , Helena can see it, and then she closes her mouth. “Maybe,” she says. She sees Helena’s grin and tries – very hard! Helena can tell! – to not smile in response. She fails. “Only if we follow the directions _right_ , though. I don’t want you throwin’ up monster pancake all over S’ kitchen.”

“I do not vomit,” Helena says. She sniffs the air. “Is burning.”

“ _Shite_ ,” Sarah says, and flips the pancake. It is definitely burned. Sarah frowns at it some more, which probably won’t help more this time around. Maybe it will, though. If Helena was a pancake, and Sarah looked upset with her, she would unburn herself. She would do anything.

“Look, though,” Sarah says, gesturing triumphantly with the spatula. “Got bigger.”

“It did,” Helena says sulkily. “You win. No baby pancakes for you, Sarah.”

Sarah snickers to herself and prods at the pancake. “Think it’s done,” she says, and slides it onto a plate. They study it. It’s burned on one side, but the other side is a perfect golden brown. It _looks_ like a pancake. Sarah dumps more batter into the pan and says: “You taste it.” At Helena’s baffled silence, she adds: “You just said you don’t vomit, didn’t you? Need your iron gut for this one.”

Helena rips the pancake in two and stuffs part of it in her mouth. It does not taste like syrup, which is bad. She realizes slowly and then very fast that she does not actually know what pancakes are supposed to taste like. She keeps chewing, to buy time.

“Very good,” she says, after she swallows.

“Really?” Sarah looks pleased despite herself. She flips the latest pancake over; already it looks better than the last one.

“Yes,” Helena says. “We are good chefs, _sestra_. Next is cakes.”

“God no.”

“ _Sarah_.”

“No,” Sarah says, “next we’re gonna eat these, and we’re gonna wash up, and then _maybe_ after that we make your big bloody monster pancake. No cakes for a long while, meathead. Got it?”

Helena considers. “Okay,” she says, and she watches Sarah slide the pancake onto the plate. It looks perfect. Helena tilts her head to the side, to see if she can see them in it – Sarah’s frowning, bits of eggshell Helena might have forgotten, the soft tumble of the light. None of it is in there, but: Sarah is humming something under her breath, shoulders easy, and Helena’s belly is full of pancake – and will be fuller – and so. Helena likes the pancake anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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